


Tea Time For Two

by ContreParry



Series: Messere Anders's Murder Mysteries [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe- 1920s Kirkwall, Conversations, Gen, Miss Fischer's Murder Mysteries AU, Slight Anders Backstory, Slow Burn Fenders, Wartime Flashbacks, tea time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 11:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10943547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ContreParry/pseuds/ContreParry
Summary: Anders remembers war and has tea with a frustratingly tight lipped detective. A short story in the Messere Anders's Murder Mysteries AU.





	Tea Time For Two

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this short story as a between chapter fic for AndrastesKnickerweasels and their mom. I wanted to get back into this universe to write glamorous 1920s Anders and his wild wardrobe, so I thought I'd dip my feet back in with a short story!

“Healer! We need a healer!” Someone cried out in the medical tent. It was a common enough call on the battlefield, a common enough cry in Ferelden now with the Blight and civil war looming on the horizon. A king dead, a traitor on the throne, and the dead walked across the land. Ferelden needed healers, those miracle workers in blue and gray and crimson and white, wandering with the healer’s symbol of either the Circle torque or Warden gryphon on their arm. No matter the circumstances, a healer was a welcome sight.

“Shhh.” Anders murmured to a lad laid up on a stretcher. The army boys would come soon and transport him to a hospital in Denerim, weaving their jeep through treacherous wasteland to reach cleaner facilities and better equipment. But Anders could do something for this boy now. He wiped the sweat and dirt and blood from his forehead and gave the boy a small smile. He couldn’t be older than sixteen, Anders thought sadly. He might be a tall, strapping young man, but his eyes were too young for eighteen. Too young to enlist.

“What’s your name, lad?” Anders murmured as he took the boy’s pulse. “Easy now.” Dark hair, eyes as blue as the summer sky, a lovely boy. Too young to be out here in the mud, fighting in a war. He should be home, flirting with a girl and stealing some pie, not here in the forsaken plains fighting and dying.

“Carver.” The boy muttered. “My brother, he’s in the Third Battalion-”

“Easy, Carver. They retreated. They’re fine.” Anders reached out with magic to poke and prod at the body and figure out what was wrong. No Blight Sickness, thank the Maker, just a few broken bones, a nasty sprain, and a gash across the forehead. He’d need rest and a clean place to recover in, but Anders could splint him. He could soothe the pain and make him sleep, just for a bit.

“Rest easy, soldier. They’ll be taking you in soon.” Anders said gently as he let his magic wash over the boy. Carver’s eyelids fluttered, then closed.

“You’re better at this than Bethy.” He mumbled, and then he was gone. His chest rose and fell in a slow, easy, repetitive motion, and Anders sighed in relief. Alive. At least he had saved one. He rose from the dirt as the ambulance drove in, and turned to the barren wasteland of the battlefield. More healers in Warden gray and blue and Chantry crimson and white moved across the landscape like colorful ghosts, following the cries of “Healer! Healer!” It was a cry Anders would never forget.

“Messere Anders?” A low voice cut through the fog of memories. He returned his attention to the elf sitting across the table from him. Bright green eyes assessed him with polite curiosity. Always polite, yet there was a wild intelligence in that gaze that suggested the owner of those eyes was not as polite and proper as he pretended to be.

“Ah, Messere Fenris. I do apologize.” Anders waved his hand vaguely in the air. “I was… reminiscing. What was it you needed?”

“I wished to thank you for the services you provided the station last week. We tracked down the batch of bad lyrium. I thought to inform you.” Fenris said, his expression stern and body stiff. He sat on the edge of a slightly over-stuffed sofa in Anders’s hotel room parlor. Part of him wondered at the eccentricity of living out of suitcases in a hotel suite, but Anders was fine with luxuriating in the hotel’s many perks indefinitely.

“Any arrests?” Anders asked as he poured the detective a cup of tea. One sugar and a splash of milk for Fenris. Anders took his with lemon and honey, an affectation he carried from the war. He had to fight against sore throats so he could instruct junior healers and speak with patients. It was a habit he could not let go of.

“The Grand Cleric is reluctant to cooperate, but we believe we can apply enough strategic pressure to have her cough up the guilty party.” Fenris replied, and he took the teacup from Anders. “Thank you, Messere.” His manners were impeccable, but just slightly different. They were polite, obviously, and well studied, but Fenris’s hands were cupped around the teacup, not clutching the handle. Not Orlesian or Ferelden, and certainly not Free Marcher manners. Perhaps Rivaini, or even Antivan? But Fenris’s accent was not Antivan. Anders kept the questions to himself.

“You’re optimistic, aren’t you?” Anders remarked as he processed Detective Fenris’s comment. He knew Kirkwall, and the Grand Cleric Elthina would give the Guard nothing. She would walk out of this as clean and sweet-smelling as a rose, and all her associates would walk with her. It may have been ten years, but he did not trust those snakes to shed a new skin when they hadn’t yet outgrown it.

“Practical. The victim was well regarded. A personal favorite companion of the Empress of Orlais, or so I’ve been told. It will be a challenge for the Grand Cleric and Knight Commander to deny an Empress.” Fenris said crisply. He always spoke precisely, every word measured and curt. Anders enjoyed listening to him speak, though coaxing words out of the detective’s notoriously tight lipped mouth was a task worthy of the Maker’s patience.

“Interesting gossip. I do appreciate the visit, of course, but I wonder why you decided to call.” Anders said. Fenris was not one for social visits, he could tell that much. He was dressed in his guard uniform, dark blue with silver buttons and Kirkwall’s crest stitched on the right breast pocket, and he looked stiff and uncomfortable. Anders, by contrast, was lounging in a pair of wide legged trousers in white and a white, low cut blouse. He was not expecting visitors, and the detective’s appearance was quite the surprise. It was not, however, unwelcome.

“Constable Carver Hawke informed me that you seemed rather… familiar to him.” Detective Fenris set his teacup down on the table with a definite clinking sound. “And I had a good look at your Warden records again. You were at Lothering during the Blight.”

“I’m a skilled spirit healer.” Anders acknowledged. “I was everywhere during the Blight.” But now that he thought of it, of those blue eyes and frightened face on the fields outside Lothering, he found that he did recognize it. What a small world, to travel across an ocean and find a boy he healed turn out into a fine (if grumpy) young man.

“Yet you didn’t recognize Carver. Odd.” Fenris mused. Anders could have dismissed the comment as snideness or light conversation, but those green eyes were calculating and protective. Searching.

“There were many faces, many names. A good deal of soldiers didn’t walk off the battlefield in Ferelden. Names and faces run together.” Anders replied. “I rarely remembered who my patients were, unless I monitored their recovery.” A few names came to mind- Warden Commander Tabris, Nathaniel Howe, Alistair- memorable patients all of them. But he hadn’t forgotten Carver Hawke, not really. Anders wondered if he could ever truly forget a patient.

“I meant no offense.” Fenris sighed. “His family would be grateful to know the identity of the healer who saved their son. Carver would be grateful.”

“I don’t need gratitude, Detective. I did what any healer would do. Any mage.” Anders pointed out, and he privately wondered if he was one of the reasons the Hawke family donated so freely to Kirkwall’s hospitals. Justice was always quick to impress upon their charity and kindness towards mages and mage freedom. At first he thought it was because of Bethany, but now Anders wondered.

“Not any mage.” Fenris abruptly stood up from the couch. “I have overstayed my welcome, I am sure. I only wished to thank you for your help and ask about your connection with the Hawke family. Nothing more.” But there was that searching gleam in his eyes, the hunting look that was dissatisfied. What was the detective looking for? Anders could not be certain, but that look cut him to his core.

“You’re protective of them, aren’t you? The Hawkes.” Anders said, and Detective Fenris’s short intake of breath told him he hit upon the truth.

“They are good people.” Fenris said shortly. “Thank you for the tea, Messere Anders.”

“We should have tea again sometime, in my own parlor.” Anders said suddenly. “Once I find a suitable house.”

“You are making your stay more permanent?” Fenris asked, but he seemed surprised. It pleased Anders to know he could ruffle the elf’s feathers. It felt good.

“Oh, Cousin Justice asked me to help with his free clinic project, and I could never refuse my dear cousin.” Anders lied breezily. “And Kirkwall has certainly gotten interesting, in the time I’ve been away.” Fenris was planning to take down a Chantry sister for illegal lyrium smuggling, Isabela had a business and a few interesting connections, and there was the Hawke family and their meteoric rise to wealth and power. Kirkwall was much more interesting these days.

In such an interesting city, no one was going to notice a mage healer investigating his lover’s murder. The case was forgotten and dead. No one would see a thing he did in a rotten city full of colorful characters. And perhaps he was a little curious and wanted to see how this city changed in the ten years he’d been gone. Anders politely smiled at Fenris and lifted his teacup to him in a salute.

“I wish you the best of luck with your investigation, Detective. Good day.” Anders said politely. Fenris merely nodded his head and left, placing his hat on his head and shrugging a dark green wool overcoat on as he left the room. He shut the door behind him with an audible thud, a deliberate noise that rattled the china cabinet. Anders wondered if he had truly gotten under the detective’s skin so quickly that he had to slam doors.

Anders wandered over to the window to watch the detective make his way down the street, long legs moving in quick, long strides, back straight, head proud. Maker, he was a beautiful man! Anders would have sighed over the way the detective’s eyes shifted in their many moods, but he left sighing behind him a long time ago. Instead he shook his head and approached the telephone. Isabela would know the right people to get in touch with to purchase a home, and Anders did want to hang up his wardrobe properly.

After all, he couldn’t hunt down murderers in wrinkled silk. How gauche!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading! I hope this was acceptable!


End file.
